February Update on Winter Song

Outline of Winter Song

This is a plotting, rather than a selling outline. They’re related, but the first is the ugly step-parent of the second.

Note to anyone looking at this embryonic version of an outline – this is a work in progress; therefore if you see something that doesn’t make sense, it’s probably because I haven’t yet got to it. So if it doesn’t make sense, ask – or better still, make a suggestion. Ultimately, the characters are my characters, and I’ll decide on the final plot, but I’m happy to take input from as many people as want to see their name on the acknowledgements page…

So -- Take a portion of Egil’s Saga from the Icelandic Sagas and cross with The Man Who Fell to Earth and Castaway, all set against a backdrop of something from a lost chapter of a novel such as A Fire Upon the Deep – no that last one is too specific. Anything Wide Screen Baroque / Space Opera will do.

Back Page Text
An injured spacer crash-lands on a remote planet and is nursed back to health by a local woman; despite the fact that it will break her heart, she helps him travel across a hostile wilderness to a spaceship that crashed earlier, and activate its distress beacon, even though it will condemn at least one-half of the colony to an uncertain fate.

Context
It’s about a thousand years in the future, no one’s quite sure because everyone has their own calendar, even on Earth.

Humanity has made it out to the stars, and while it’s found life on other worlds, none of it is even sentient, let alone capable of civilization. Humanity isn’t quite as unique as some twen-cen theorists maintained, but it is unusual in breaking out of its home solar system.

And humanity being what it is, it’s splintered into almost countless factions, most of which spend their time varying between simply disagreeing with one another, and actually going to war.

The Ay-eyes (AIs) are the inevitable result of ever-increasing computer power. No one’s ever quite sure whether they attained the fabled Singularity, because before they became completely incomprehensible, they simply went off to odd bits of the galaxy and now do whatever odd things they do. They get blamed for everything, from supernovas to disappearing ships, and their presence is probably the one unifying thing that stops humanity from exterminating itself.

The Radicals still use AIs, but their power is limited, and anyone who uses them is viewed by suspicion by every other faction, including less extreme Radicals. Because both the Radicals and the Traditionals are less clearly-cut than some of their politicians would argue.

At the extreme end of the Radicals are the Ultras (can we come up with a better name?) who verge on being cyborgs, so enhanced are they. The less extreme ones use nanotech and Rejuve to extend their life-span to four, even five centuries, and are superficially indistinguishable from more mainstream Traditionals.

Up to the age of twenty, humans age much as we do now. Past twenty and Rejuve treatments kick in, and up to the middle years, the Rejuve treatments get more and more effective so that by the time someone looks say sixty, eight or nine years could only age them one year. Past those middle years and efficacy gradually wears off.

However, Rejuve prohibits preganancy, so if families want children, the woman has to come off Rejuve, and it can take several years for it to wear off; once the woman has had the child, the Rejuve only gradually assumes efficacy – the result can be shaving decades or even a century or more off a woman’s life. Unsurprisingly, cloning is more popular than ‘in utero’ pregnancies, and mainstream elements of both factions tend to use cloning, rather than traditional births. Radicals will marry clones of themselves are part of their extended family, and may even have ‘offspring,’ all of which are carefully monitored and enhanced.

Some Traditionals also use Rejuve, but are much more likely to have in utero childbirth as a preferred method of reproduction, and are unlikely to have clone-marriages – however some factions do embrace cloning. The more extreme Traditionals, the Sanctifiers, reject outside bodies such as Nanobytes, while The Mayflies even reject Rejuve, which contains nanotech elements – they will live to only a hundred to one-hundred and fifty.

There are frequent conflicts between the factions, and even mini-civil-wars, one of which the protagonist is caught on the edge of at the start of the novel.

Facing off against both factions, who assume Terraforming to some extent to be the default position of humanity are the Pantropists, the descendants of those who have instead adapted themselves to their environment rather than vice versa. By nature Radicals, the alterations are genetic, but they may even have adapted to breathe non-oxygen atmosphere.

Humanity’s march to the current position has not been a steady one. The Pantropists gradually fell from favour with many ‘human’ governments, especially as Terraforming grew easier, less expensive and less politically viable – although it is still not something undertaken lightly; often several worlds (or even planetary systems) will undertake a combined project – and earth-like worlds were slowly discovered. This falling-out led to The Interregnum about two centuries from now, in which many Pantropist worlds seceded from the wider embrace of humanity and/or ran out of money. So Pantropists are comparatively rare, and some have devolved so they no longer even recognize themselves or are recognizable as human. So it is with Isheimur (the world that is the setting for Winter Song).

The second great conflict was The Long Night (perhaps I should have a world called Anderson – if anyone can think of an alternative to his phrase that’s as eerily evocative, I’ll gladly embrace it) an almost-century long conflict about two centuries before, which has left much of the old order in shambles, seen whole worlds destroyed, and left the Terraformers of Isheimur with insufficient resources to finish the job of Terraforming Isheimur.

Setting
Isheimur is a lost colony world that’s been settled not once but twice; first by a group of Pantropists, then by a wave of Terraformers, whose attempts to alter the world are halted by an interstellar war cutting off their resources; neither set of descendants realize the truth of the other’s existence – both have lost their original culture, and the Pantropists do not even realize that they are human. By the time Allman crashes, society has devolved to something almost feudal, with individual farmsteads forming the bases of communities. There are also creatures, some of whom seem very reminiscent of Icelandic legend, like trolls and dragons, although they are not the creatures of myth. Nor are the rock-eaters, who form the staple diet of the Pantropist’s descendants, the Trolls.

Flora & Fauna

Rock-Eaters
I’ll work on this later.

Snohawks
They look remarkably like white falcons with two-metre-long wingspans. In the wild they grow much larger, and prey on both Rock-eaters and the settler’s thick-fleeced sheep. As such, they are regarded as a pest. But the Terraformer settlers have domesticated them; the domestic empathically bond with their handlers, and feed on the blood of their handler. The feeding is private, as the snohawk feeds every third or fourth day via a wound at the base of the big toe, which never fully heals, but which has to be staunched via dressings. The handler develops a severe limp, and is semi-housebond. The snohawk, because it does not feed as often as in the wild, and because of a slight genetic mismatch in the blood, grows stunted. (“A sort of bonsai bird,” is how Karl describes it when he works it out, to Bera’s obvious bemusement)

Geography & Geology
Orbiting the gas-giant the locals call Wotan, Isheimur is geolocially unstable and riven by vulcanism. Karl realizes that maintaining a pseudo-Terran environment would be an almost non-stop operation, and without constant access to current technology, the settlers are –in the long-term—doomed. Had they had longer, they would have doomed the Pantropists, even though their mission would have failed. As it was, only blind luck saved the Pantropists, with the Terraformers running out of funds just before The Long Night descended. As it is, the planet is so cold, the air so thin that it’s barely on the margins of survivability –infant mortality is high, genetic diseases common[CH1] , and life Mayfly short—and it’s soon going to be uninhabitable to the Settlers.

Isheimur is inhabitable to humans only between the tropics, and then really only in the summer above ground; much of the winter is spent underground.

North and south of the tropics are still –just- inhabitable for the adapted men, who have a sort of no-man’s-land of several hundred miles where men and trolls/giants live within hunting distance of one another.

And in the far south, just before Ship was destroyed, it spotted evidence of a crashed ship. A ship which maybe Allman can take back into orbit, even send a distress call, even – unlikely though it seems—fly it home…

Protagonists
Karl Allman is married to a clone-wife, and has a brood-wife with whom he has had a child, and a pair-husband. His brood-wife is pregnant, something they have been trying for for over forty years, so he is desperate to return home. Karl was bullied as a child (one bully made him drink bleach to watch what the nanobytes did to repair the damage – nanotech paradoxically makes life easier for bullies as its harder to damage a body irrepairably, although not impossible). The bully was short, stocky and dark – exactly like Ragnar. Karl is unable to hide his initial antipathy to Ragnar; antipathy that is more than returned.

Antagonists
Ragnar Helgrimsson; dark and intense – poetic yet brutal, given to violent fits of rage, but at the start seems merely sullen, and can turn on the charm when he chooses. In fact, in the beginning, when we first meet him, and he is with friends – and especially with women – he is very charming, and quite kind. But when he drinks, he turns ugly, and especially when he is around Karl, whose presence makes him feel threatened (he is jealous of the gene-sculpted spacer’s almost inhuman beauty) so tries to assert his masculinity, and when Karl defies him, his temper gets the better of him.

‘Loki.’ The downloaded ship’s AI, with a little of Karl’s personality. Having to initialize from scratch is the equivalent of childhood. What the logical Ship never considered was that the process of downloading an immature AI into a human being with no coaching or counselling such as Ship had at the Epsilon Eridani V Shipyards would lead to a traumatised and disturbed personality. Understandably, Loki feels threatened by the situation and tries to control it, leading to conflict.

Catalysts
Bera Sigurdsdottir; Ragnar’s foster-daughter. Deformed, but pregnant by Ragnar at the start of the story, although she won’t admit the father’s identity. Her falling in love with Karl is the catalyst for the conflict, and when she decides to help him in defiance of Ragnar, things get very nasty.

Full Synopsis
Ambushed by enemy ships in an isolated planetary-system, Karl Allman crash-lands on a wintry planet, where he is nursed back to health by Bera, a local woman who has just lost her child. A woman so plain she’s almost ugly, she is also shunned as a witch by her local community, and so doubly lonely. Karl is so enhanced that he seems god-like to her, and she falls in love with the almost inhumanly handsome stranger.

This angers Ragnar, Bera’s foster-father and also her landlord, and a powerful and skilled warrior. Ragnar realizes –albeit subconsciously—that Karl is a challenge to his legitimate authority and is convinced that the stranger is possessed by an evil spirit.
Karl is desperate to get home – he and his wife have been trying to conceive for decades, and the birth of their first child is imminent –and when he learns of a legend that he believes identifies a spaceship that crashed earlier, he is determined to travel across a hostile wilderness to activate its distress beacon. Despite the fact that she knows it will take him away from her, Bera helps him.

Karl’s ‘treachery’ in leaving the homestead is too much for Ragnar, who determines to bring Bera to ‘justice’ for leaving his domain, and he sets out in pursuit across the ice desert and to exact revenge on Karl. (Crisis One)

Karl has been suffering periodic black-outs, which he believes result from a head injury on landing. His access to the information that Ship downloaded as he abandoned her is impaired, which he believes is another consequence of the injury. What he doesn’t realize at first is that Ship actually downloaded a smaller, portable, and less powerful version of her programs. ‘Loki’ as Ragnar has dubbed the AI, is attempting to withhold information.

Throughout Karl’s convalescence, the portable AI (which has perhaps been corrupted in the process, or it may simply be that in ‘maturing’ in a human cranium distorts it) has become determined to survive, and does his best to disrupt proceedings, without revealing himself – Karl doesn’t realize the significance of knowing more about Isheimur than he should if the download had failed completely—but Bera sees the changes at night and believing Karl possessed, blurts out the truth as they leave. Karl laughs it off, but she tells him that Ragnar has also seen Loki, and will use his ‘possession’ as a pretext to hunt them down.

As they travel across the ice-fields, Karl and Bera stumble across a troll feeding a
wild snohawk on blood from his toe in exactly the same way as handlers at the homesteads feed their domestic snohawks. Karl realizes that if that’s the case, then homesteaders and aborigines must share the same genetic code, despite their superficial differences.

He becomes determined to access his memories, and Loki becomes ever more disruptive, to the point where the pair must travel slightly apart. But Loki has bonded to Bera, whom he believes is his Mother. Fragments of the database convince him that he is the reincarnation of Oedipus, but that this time, he will survive and not blind himself. When Bera is attacked and the time it takes to get to her nearly proves fatal, Loki opens up and declares a truce.

Accessing Loki’s memories Karl learns of a legendary Pantropist ship, which was due to settle a world in an adjacent star-system with similar properties. If so, it’s very likely that the Terraformers have inadvertently stumbled on their descendants – the Aborigines. With a Pantropist resurgence, activating the beacon will either bring more Pantropists who will ethnically cleanse the planet of Terraformers, or their opponents who will eradicate the Aborigines.

They survive an encounter with a Troll, and subdue it. Karl begins to learn its language, and realizes that it is a distant corruption of Mongolian. He allows the Troll its freedom, in return for directions to the Shrine (ship). He assures the Troll[CH2] they mean no harm or disrespect.
They eventually reach the shrine, but Ragnar ambushes them as they board the ship, injures Karl and has the spacer at his mercy, when Loki reveals himself. But Loki has misjudged Ragnar’s loathing of all things off-world and raises his axe to hack off his enemy’s head (Crisis Two) – and at that moment the Troll attacks, and while Ragnar is distracted, Bera hits him with a rock and knocks him out.

The Troll wishes to eject the body of the ‘infidel’ Ragnar, but the recovering Karl persuades him to show clemency, and manages to launch the ship from the ice-field in which it has lain for centuries. As the ship clears the planet’s atmosphere, Ragnar regains consciousness, to find himself bound.

At first Ragnar is convinced that this is magic, that Loki is in league with the Troll, and that Bera is either a traitor or possessed. But as time passes, and Karl battles to override the ship’s primitive AI, the settler accepts that the effort that would be required to maintain the illusion or keep them wherever they are is disproportionate. “After all,” Karl says, “if I had so much power, why don’t I simply ‘possess’ you?” he asks. Ragnar is an intelligent man, for all his pride and superstition; he slowly accepts the logic of it.

Karl still faces the dilemma over whether to set off the beacon, but realizes that whatever he does will bring change. If he does nothing, the Terraformers will slowly die. If he can add a decade or so to the colonist’s window of opportunity, it may allow Ragnar and the Troll time to negotiate some sort of peace settlement; “Whether or not I’m there is immaterial,” he says. “If either side comes first, you need to have reached a settlement to avoid dragging them in.” Ragnar and the Troll agree, albeit reluctantly. Karl knows that a long time will need to pass before there is complete control, but it is a start.

Karl explains that he is going to dump the ship’s power core into a large comet coming through the system; this will increase the carbon dioxide and water vapour and raise the temperature and moisture, while the resultant explosion will act as a beacon. His inputting the instructions to rendezvous with the comet and his initial instructions to begin removing the core’s safety protocols causes the ship’s AI to identify the intruders as a potential threat, and provokes a counter-attack in which it tries to regain control by voiding the atmosphere (Crisis Three).

They have only seconds to live, but the Troll manages to block one of the doors, preventing them being sucked out; even as the others lose consciousness, Karl’s enhancements, which include increased lung capacity (foreshadow this in section two with a dip into a hot spring when Bera drops something valuable) allow him to stay conscious just long enough to jack into the ship’s system. Despite his guilt at harming a sentient being, Karl ‘kills’ the ships AI – and uploading Loki into the ship’s system, assumes manual control. “When I can trust you,” he says, “I’ll relinquish control.”

He lines the ship up in such a way that when they dump the core into the comet, the reaction from actually blowing the core clear will fire them toward Isheimur.

The novel ends with Karl and the riding the shockwave into the atmosphere again and Bera taking his hand. “If we live, and your people come for you, I want to come. I want to see the stars.”

[CH1](look up what’s likely in the way of diseases.

[CH2]Need to name this character

New Novel -- Winter Song

One of the things I'll be looking to do is to get greater interaction with readers and other writers.

So as from tomorrow, when I post the first page of a (very) rough synopsis, I'll be looking for readers of this blog --if there are any!-- to give their thoughts as to the viability of ideas and plot structure and suggest improvements if they wish.

That doesn't mean to say that everything that people suggest will go into Winter Song; I'll have the final say, as it's my book, but I'll listen sympathetically to character insights and plot suggestions, and scientific expertise will be seized upon with glee.

I'll name-check all contributors on the acknowledgements page as a thank-you.

Colin
January 8th

The Last Confession

Yesterday afternoon we spent the hottest afternoon of the year in a Victorian theatre. How dumb is that?

We got tickets for £5, whereas we would normally have to pay £25 each.

David Suchet was superb as the Cardinal who stepped aside to allow The Pole to become Pope. I sat there watching, and realized that acting for the stage with it's repetoire of broad gestures so that the audience in the Gods can see each gesture must be completely different from acting for TV, with it's focus on close-range camerawork. (Okay, so it took me long enough, but I get there in the end...)

Barter and Keynsham-on-Cyberspace

Friday night, our friends Nick and Zoe came around. Nick is a landscape gardener, while Zoe is a kitchen designer who's vamping up my photos for Katy's Cookbook. She's also putting together the cover.

The barter system is alive and well. We give them a load of Kate's spare plants and they gave us a bench that had been tossed out. Brilliant!

Last night, Phil the Bus came around with his wife Cook (real name June) and I showed him his picture on MySpace. Phil is as computer literate as any Luddite, and boggled at the thought that his picture was there, courtesy of www.myspace.com/Keynsham. Described as 'Like the Matrix, but for old people.' Hah. More like the Royston Vezey of cyberspace.

A Shocking Dereliction of Duty

I realized today that I haven't posted for 3 days.

It's because I've been in danger of getting some kind of life.

But I'll try to put things right by posting 3 times tonight.

Redundancy

So the guillotine came down yesterday. Unless I go earlier, August 31st will mark my last day working for The Beast, after 20 years 8 months and 9 days.

The funny thing is that they forgot to give me my notice. I'm so memorable, that they forgot to sack me!

The good news is that now I have The Letter, I slammed in an application to DeathRay magazine for the position of Staff Writer. I'm hoping that they haven't already filled the post. But I shall cross my fingers.

The 2007 Gulliver Travel Research Grant

Writers Please note:--

The 2007 Gulliver Travel Research Grant will be open for applications from July 1st, 2007 to September 30th, 2007. The grant is not currently available for academic research, though we hope to offer such funds in the future.

The SLF is currently offering one $600 travel grant annually, to be used to cover airfare, lodging, and/or other travel expenses.

The Gulliver Travel Research Grant is awarded to assist writers of speculative literature, including fiction, drama, poetry, and creative nonfiction, in their research. (The Gulliver Travel Research Grant is only awarded to writers of speculative fiction, poetry, drama, or creative nonfiction. The speculative genre typically includes science fiction, fantasy, slipstream, and sometimes horror)

The Gulliver Travel Research Grant, formerly the Speculative Literature Foundation Travel Research Grant, was renamed in November 2006 at the request of the grant sponsor. Gulliver, a character in the 1726 story "Gulliver's Travels" written by Jonathan Swift, represents one of the earliest examples of fantasy travel.

The Gulliver Travel Grant will be awarded by a committee of SLF staff members on the basis of interest and merit. Factors considered will include:

1. A one-page written description of the project in question, including details on the travel location and an estimated completion date (no more than 500 words)

2. A writing sample in the proposed genre (up to 10 pages of poetry, 10 pages of drama, or 5000 words of fiction or creative nonfiction); please note that the writing sample must be a solo work (work completed only by the applicant).

3.A bibliography of previously-published work by the author (no more than one page, typed); however, applicants need not have previous publications to apply. The 2006 winner was previously unpublished.

If awarded the grant, the recipient agrees to write a brief report of their research experience (500-1000 words) for the SLF’s files, and for possible public dissemination on our website.

PLEASE NOTE: This grant, as with all SLF grants, is intended to help writers working with speculative literature only.

Travel Grant Application Procedures
1. Send the three items listed above to our travel grant administrators, Colin Harvey and Tiffany Jonas, as attached .doc files, to http://uk.f272.mail.yahoo.com/ym/Compose?To=travel@speculativeliterature.org. Include a brief cover letter with your name and contact info (e-mail, phone in case of emergency). If you have questions, direct them to that same address.

2. You may apply for travel to take place at any point in the following year (from October to the following October).

3. Travel may take place from any country to any country, or internally within a country; the grants are unrestricted. Funds will be disbursed in U.S. currency (but can be sent through PayPal if that is more convenient for international recipients).

4. Travel grant applications will only be considered from July 1st to September 30th 2007. Applications received before or after that period will be discarded unread.

5. The grant recipient will be announced by October 15th 2007. All applicants will be notified of the status of their application by that date.